


are you ready now?

by firstaudrina



Category: My So-Called Life
Genre: Consensual Underage Sex, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 08:29:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17915366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: She wanted to be Angela’s diary, the thing she wrote in, the pages she turned. Trouble was, Rayanne didn’t have any locks.





	are you ready now?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [the body talk ficathon](https://girljustdied.dreamwidth.org/262726.html), though I didn't quite get it in there on time. Oh well, better late than never. 
> 
> Prompts were: pretty, red, scared, skirt.

The thing is, Angela’s always saying stuff. Stuff that Rayanne would never even think to think, let alone say out loud. Sometimes she would look at Angela — across a classroom, reflected in a bathroom mirror — really study the composed stillness of her face, that little furrow between her brows the only thing that stopped her from looking like some chickie in an oil painting. Rayanne would look at her and wonder what the hell was going on in there, because she knew it was a lot. And she wanted to know all of it. She wanted to be Angela’s diary, the thing she wrote in, the pages she turned. Trouble was, Rayanne didn’t have any locks.

She lures Angela home with her after skiving off seventh period, stroking her fingers down Angela’s arms as she draws her towards the back stairs. _No, no, I can’t_ , Angela keeps saying, and Rayanne replies, _what if you did? What if you did?_

Angela laughs, and then she does. 

Angela always gets real wide eyed in Rayanne’s bedroom, sits very contained like she’s afraid she’s going to break something. It’s a psychedelic swirling maw, scarves on lampshades and beads hanging from doorways, posters pasted over posters on the wall. Rayanne puts on one of her mom’s old records — first The Doors, but Angela doesn’t like them, so then Janis Ian, who Angela does. Rayanne wants to unravel but she knows Angela will kind of shake her head at a beer, skittish maybe, and Rayanne will feel that gross bottomless feeling in her stomach. The one that tells her: _bad_. The one she never listens to. 

Instead Rayanne says, “Let me dress you up, c’mon Angela, I never had a Barbie.”

And Angela does. But first: 

“Snacks!” Rayanne exclaims, drags Angela into the kitchen and piles food into her arms: half a box of leftover Valentine’s chocolates that Amber got from some skeeze, the burrito Rayanne started on at breakfast, a crumpled bag of Doritos, that off-brand ginger ale. Angela eats with careful fingers, one chip at a time clasped between forefinger and thumb, until Rayanne chomps a chocolate in half and sticks the rest into Angela’s mouth, smears caramel on her lips. Angela gets her back, tackles her onto the unmade bed, already piled with outfit options. Rayanne looks down at Angela, her pale moon face glowing against her wine-red hair, and wonders what the hell she’s thinking. A smile playing on her lips. It could be anything. 

“Red,” Rayanne decides.

She has a sexy little red dress because Amber once said every woman should have one. It’s linen, with a square neck and buttons all the way down to the hem. It’s a little too big and a little too long, so Rayanne usually just buttons the three in the middle, from navel to crotch. Leaves it open over her bra and belts it, lets it swirl loose around her legs to show off the rolled-down thigh-highs and combat boots. Angela puts it on over her jeans and t-shirt, buttons it all the way so she’s clothed in crimson from collarbone to shin. 

“You can’t,” Rayanne declares. “Cannot. You _cannot_ wear it like that, Angela. I have a reputation.”

They have another little faux fight, Rayanne picking and plucking at her, Angela pinching her back. In the end the t-shirt is wrested off and pulled through the straps of the dress, the jeans get rolled down to the carpet. The dress gapes and slouches but Angela looks mystical, all opal and ruby. 

“I have the perfect lipstick for that.” Rayanne rustles through her vanity until she finds the one she’d worn for Halloween, Revlon Certainly Red. She’d swiped it from the drug store late one night with Rickie. She was drunk; he was not. Ha ha. What’s the punchline? 

She sits Angela on the bed, says, “Open your mouth — not too much. Go _ah_.” Rayanne is an expert at drawing on lipstick without liner, coloring inside the lines on her first try. She traces the shape of Angela’s lips with care, four fingertips spanning her cheek and thumb against her chin for stability. Her mouth is a set of closed parentheses containing all those unsaid thoughts. Amber said Rayanne was like Clara Bow with her coquettish little heart lips. All the different reds clash, but Rayanne likes that. 

“I’m gonna turn you into Cleopatra,” Rayanne decides. She can see it: serious eyeliner, the crisp line of Angela’s hair, the contrast of bright blue Elizabeth Taylor eyeshadow. Rayanne can drape a necklace over her temples like a crown. 

But Angela wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. Instead she dips her fingertip into the waiting pot of blue pigment and reaches up, tentative but not uncertain. Rayanne doesn’t breathe but she closes her eyes. The pad of Angela’s finger smoothes over her eyelids, a little clammy and so close. Rayanne feels paper thin. She doesn’t want to open her eyes but she does. Angela is grinning, goofy. “It’s not going to get you the cover of _Vogue_ magazine or anything.”

Rayanne looks at the mirror, sees herself startled with turquoise shimmer up to her browbone. “Wild,” she breathes. 

Angela tucks a twisting curl behind Rayanne’s ear. “Yeah.”

This thing happens sometimes, late at night in clubs or in the backseats of cars, where Rayanne’s vision will go razor-sharp. It’s like she can see all the little molecules that make up everything. But as crisp as it is, it’s still never clear, because those are the moments where Rayanne makes her dumbest decisions. Like now, when she ducks her head and presses an impulsive kiss to Angela’s red mouth. She can see Angela’s every eyelash, every strand of hair, every pore. She can see the yellowy ring around her pupils, her eyes clear as sea glass. Rayanne can see everything and she still doesn’t know shit. 

Angela’s top lip is caught between Rayanne’s, tasting of wax and roses. Rayanne remembers too late that Angela doesn’t like to be caught by surprise with a kiss, remembers the story of Jordan Catalano in the car and how she’d howled in delight to hear it. So Rayanne pulls back first, insecure suddenly, prepared to be on the receiving end of Angela Chase’s unexpected flurry of admonishment. But Angela tilts back in and catches Rayanne’s mouth again, hands on either side of her head. 

Angela says, “You know I used to say your name all the time in my head? Like it was lyrics to a song. Like I could summon you with it. Rayanne, Rayanne, Rayanne. Like if I said it enough times in the right combination, I could get you to look at me. And then one day you did.” 

That? Rayanne could never have predicted that if she lived twelve lifetimes like in one of Amber’s metaphysical books. All she can think is, _and you’re not sorry I did?_

But she just says, “And then one day I did.” The weird part is that once Rayanne started seeking out Angela Chase in a crowd, she didn’t know what she’d been doing before. Had she really been so entertained by those greasers and cheeseballs? Or was her eye just constantly roving, waiting for an explosion of color? “Still am.”

Angela gets all flustered and flushed. Her palms are still warm against Rayanne’s cheeks but she drags her fingers down, doesn’t touch Rayanne’s mouth but the skin around it. They both look at her fingertips, stained Certainly Red. Rayanne kisses her again. 

They’re sitting facing each other in front of the mirror, straddling the weird bench Rayanne and Amber got at a flea market and quote-unquote “reupholstered.” Their legs overlap, the skirt splitting to bare Angela’s skin, her knee bruised and dotted with fair brown hair. Rayanne touches the yellow-green patch of skin and thinks about the almost matching purple-red one she’s got, wonders at someone as rarified as Angela getting funny little bruises too. 

Rayanne slides her hand up. She follows the inside of Angela’s thigh to the panties she wouldn’t even let Rayanne look at before, let alone touch. Rayanne meets her eyes and Angela is as still and intent as she ever is, her forehead smooth and uncreased. She looks a hell of a lot steadier than Rayanne feels. Her stuttering touch is slow so there’s plenty of time to call it off. 

Angela shifts half an inch forward, legs widening, Janis Ian’s voice spiraling. Her mouth opens when Rayanne traces the seam of her body through her damp panties, down and up again, not even anything. With her lipstick all fucked up, Angela’s beautiful but it doesn’t hurt to look at her. Rayanne wants to keep her eyes open all-the-way wide, _Clockwork_ -style. But she always did get in trouble for staring straight into the sun, since she was a kid. Couldn’t help herself.

“Like…” Angela’s voice is all tight and shy, her eyes screwed shut. “Can I?”

Now Rayanne has curled her fingers around fabric. She scalds her knuckles on Angela’s heat, nudges at her clitoris more than strokes it, lets Angela ride up against her hand when she wants to.

“Uh-huh.” Rayanne helpfully gathers her own skirt in her free hand, prays to whoever’s out there that her undies are clean, and offers herself up to Angela’s touch. She doesn’t feel any way about it; inexperienced bozos have stuck their fingers inside her since time immemorial, she’s not going to begrudge her nearest and dearest the curiosity. But that’s before it happens. Because the second, the actual down-to-nano- _second_ that Angela touches her, Rayanne lights up like the Fourth of July. Someone plugs her in and the circuit starts a tragic, ravenous house fire. 

Like before, Angela is cautious but sure, mapping Rayanne as thoroughly as a homework assignment. She mirrors what Rayanne does, echoes every stroke. And Rayanne’s done that to herself plenty of times so she knows how it goes, but as twisty and stomach-churning as it’s gotten in bed at night, all her efforts never brought her half as close as Angela’s best guess. Angela comes in close to kiss Rayanne’s neck, tongue then lips touching down and farther down. Everywhere she leaves red lipstick breadcrumbs to follow back to Rayanne’s mouth. And Rayanne gives it up every time, wet kisses, sloppier than Angela deserves but all Rayanne can do while the fire rages on. 

Sharon can never know _shit_ , least of all that she was right.

“Angela,” Rayanne gasps, like a stupid boy, one second before she comes all over Angela’s hand. For a brief, blissful moment the molecules are back, except this time they all split apart and hover until Rayanne jolts back into herself again, electrified. “Whoa.”

Now Angela slides sticky fingers over Rayanne’s between her legs. Gentle, urging, in control. Rayanne listens to everything she’s not saying, even though her brain is basically soup sloshing around in her skull at this point. Rayanne thinks _what if you did_ and wonders if the same thing is flashing through Angela’s mind. Maybe she has a better answer. Rayanne’s always asking, but she doesn’t know what she’d say if the question was turned in her direction. 

It’s over with a softly expelled breath. Angela says, “What now?”

Rayanne shrugs and sucks on her fingers, glances at the mirror to see her own flushed face, blue eyeshadow snowing down onto her cheekbones. “You tell me.”


End file.
